


we're here now

by asexualgansey



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Late Night Conversations, Street Racing, Swearing, does that need to be tagged?, everyone is worried about everyone else, this probably fits best between tdt and bllb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6108654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualgansey/pseuds/asexualgansey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This here is a song that Ronan knows by heart. Black pavement, wind racing through the open windows, the yellow centerline, occasional flashes of signs lit up by the headlights. This is shift and engine and tires grinding on the street, lonely trees singled out from the masses of darkness. This is roar and gas and brake and the leather of the wheel beneath clenched fingers. This is a thousand nights before the night horrors stopped coming, before Kavinsky was swallowed by a dragon and his gang disappeared. This is the thousand nights where Ronan had no control.</p><p>He has control now. He chose to be here, was asked, didn't explode into the night with fear snapping at his heels. He doesn't have to worry about Kavinsky or if his dreams are going to kill his friends. Unless he dreams of bees."</p><p> </p><p>or how driving back from cabeswater at 1 am is an opportunity for wild thoughts about a certain magician's hands, deep conversations, street racing, and yet another side of richard gansey iii</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're here now

One of the benefits of insomnia is that there's always a lot more time in each day to get things done. A lot more time to do your homework, or to read that book you've been itching to crack open. Or, in the case of Ronan Lynch and Richard Gansey III, plenty of time to visit an ancient sentient forest.

Ronan doesn't really know why exactly Gansey decided that one a.m. on a Wednesday night was the best time to visit Cabeswater. He doesn't know why they drove there in a rush and did nothing but sit and watch the trees, the stars. Why Gansey scribbled furiously in his journal but refused to show Ronan the pages, and ripped them out and shoved them under his seat when they returned to the Pig. All Ronan knows is that Gansey begged him to come, so he did.

Ronan's watch said they were in Cabeswater for eleven minutes. It was probably more like two hours. And Gansey doesn't seem to feel much like talking, even though Ronan asked about seventy times what they were doing. Even though Ronan knows there must be a reason.

They speed back to Henrietta on dark two-lane highways, windows down, hot summer air filling the car like a balloon. Ronan wonders if he could dream a car that, when filled with enough air, could rise into the sky and never look back. He thinks about this a lot, about the limits of his dreams. His father dreamed an entire person, a car. Could Ronan dream something as complex? More so? A fully furnished house? An airplane?

This now, this here is a song that Ronan knows by heart. Black pavement, wind racing through the open windows, the yellow centerline, occasional flashes of signs lit up by the headlights. This is shift and engine and tires grinding on the street, lonely trees singled out from the masses of darkness. This is roar and gas and brake and the leather of the wheel beneath clenched fingers. This is a thousand nights before the night horrors stopped coming, before Kavinsky was swallowed by a dragon and his gang disappeared. This is the thousand nights where Ronan had no control.

He has control now. He chose to be here, was asked, didn't explode into the night with fear snapping at his heels. He doesn't have to worry about Kavinsky or if his dreams are going to kill his friends. Unless he dreams of bees.

"Ronan?" Gansey asks from the driver's seat over the roar of the engine, speaking for the first time since Ronan gave up on asking him why they had gone to Cabeswater.

"Yeah?"

"Does Adam... do you think Adam seems different?" 

Ronan drops his leather bands from his mouth, regards Gansey with a long look. Gansey's voice is- Ronan isn't sure. It isn't hesitant, but it's in no way full of Dick Gansey confidence either. It's a little unhinged, a little strained. Gansey keeps his eyes on the road, not even sparing Ronan a glance. His hands are tight on the wheel, knuckles bleached as pale as bone.

"How would I know?" Ronan scoffs. "I don't pay enough attention to Parrish to know when he's acting different." This is probably the biggest lie Ronan's ever told. And it's obvious.

Gansey takes his eyes off the road long enough to give Ronan a  _look_ , one that says  _I thought you didn't lie._ Ronan's responding look says  _There have to be exceptions to everything._

Gansey sighs and looks back to the dark highway. "I'm not stupid, Ronan."

Ronan doesn't know what this means. Does it mean that Gansey knows about the secret that Ronan can barely admit to himself, that he knows about the dreams of Adam's chapped hands on Ronan's tattoo, about Ronan's desperate, hungry eyes on Adam's back in class, about all the times pieces of Ronan almost say something? Or is he talking about how Ronan pretends to care about nothing, and they both know that he cares enough about Parrish to at least notice how he's acting?

Maybe Gansey's just commenting on the lack of nothing, not on the existence of  _something_.

"Yeah," Ronan says finally. "There's something different."

He doesn't mention the differences that are his and his alone; how the silent, judging figure of Adam in his dreams has turned into someone more real, someone who speaks, someone whose eyes bore into his in a way that he would hate if it was anyone else. He doesn't mention how Adam's distance, the spare elegant lines of him since his sacrifice to Cabeswater mean that Ronan's eyes are almost never off of him. Ronan doesn't mention how frighteningly happy he is that there are no more bruises snaking along Adam's cheekbones, that a bruise on his elbow explained away by an accident at the garage is probably actually from an accident in the garage. And Ronan definitely doesn't mention all the times he's shown up at Adam's door at St. Agnes in the middle of the night, how Adam just looks up from his homework or sits up slightly in bed and nods, how Ronan sinks to the floor, his blood sill thrumming with memories of forbidden dreams, the facade of the church at night, the drunken feeling of knowing how _fucking alive you are_ , and how Adam lets him stay. 

He snares another band in his teeth.

"I just think-" says Gansey. He curls one hand into a fist and slams it down on the horn, the movement and the noise and the anger behind it jarring, unexpected, a little terrifying. The Pig's horn is not a pleasant thing, and Gansey usually avoids sounding it at all costs.

Gansey seems to realize that Ronan is staring at him and laughs a little, uncurling his fingers and shaking them out before wrapping them back around the wheel. "I'm sorry," he says.

"You never have to apologize to me, Gansey," Ronan says in a low voice, surprising himself. He doesn't know if he's said anything like this before. Outside of his dreams, that is.

Gansey spares him another glance from the road. It's almost unreadable. Blank. He shifts lanes, smoothly, effortlessly. "Why is that?"

If his face was unreadable, Gansey's voice is the opposite. It's full of emotion: contradicting, wonderfully confused emotion. Pleasure, fear, guilt. Puzzlement. Regret.

"You saved my fucking life," Ronan says, not meaning for it to sound accusatory.

Gansey looks at him sharply, blankness gone. "You said that you didn't actually try to kill yourself."

"I didn't!" Ronan says, annoyed and a little angry that Gansey would think he's lying about that. "But if I hadn't known you when... Dad... I might have wrapped my fucking car around a telephone pole. I might have got in with Kavinsky and OD'd on his shitty dream drugs."

"Ronan," Gansey starts. "Don't say things like that."

Ronan gives him a look, one that says  _Didn't we just establish that I don't lie?_

Gansey's says  _And didn't you just tell me that there are exceptions?_

Ronan's says  _This isn't one of them._

"The feeling's mutual, Ronan," Gansey says, and Ronan doesn't have to ask what he means. Richard Gansey may not have been dead without Ronan Lynch, but he would have been far more alone. He would have been missing a part of himself.

"Why did you ask me about Parrish?"

"He's... I don't know." The anger is back in Gansey's voice. Not  _at_ Adam, but  _about_ Adam. Gansey sighs, a sharp exhale of breath, as if he can expel all of his worry over Adam in one go.

"Different," Ronan says.

Gansey nods. "That's the only way I can explain it. I don't know what it is. He's been more himself since he started working with Persephone, but he's still... Not the same. Not the Adam I first met. _We_ first met."

"Do you think it's just Cabeswater?" Ronan asks after a moment. Gansey looks at him, curiously. Ronan usually doesn't allow himself to be interested.

"No," Gansey says. "I mean, yes. I mean, I don't know. Cabeswater is certainly a big part of it. But I think it's also moving into St. Agnes. I haven't seen as much of him since he did."

Ronan doesn't say that he has.

"I want to help him," Gansey says, his voice pitching a little louder than it has to be to be heard over the roar of the engine. "But I don't know if he needs it."

Ronan knows what he means. They know that Adam's different. _Adam_ knows that Adam's different. But none of them know if it's a bad thing or not.

Ronan suspects it isn't. But Gansey wants to help everyone. He wants all of them to be their best selves, their happiest selves. The problem is that Gansey's idea of someone's happiness is often very different from their idea of happiness for themselves. Gansey wants to help Adam be able to stop working less, Adam wants to do whatever it takes to get to that point on his own. Gansey wants Ronan to be who he was before Niall died. Ronan wants to stop being afraid. Gansey wants Noah to be alive. Noah wants to stop worrying about who he was and be who he is now. Gansey wants Blue to be less angry, to be able to move to god-knows-where South America and study whatever she wants. Blue wants to be taken seriously for once in her life, for people to stop telling her that she's overreacting.

"Even if he needs it, he won't want it," Ronan says.

Gansey sighs. "I know."

And he really does, he knows it with every fiber of his being. He knows that Adam doesn't want his help. Adam helps himself. Gansey knows this. But he doesn't want it to be true, he can't accept it, so he keeps offering Adam money or time or Monmouth. And Adam says no and Gansey asks why and they end up fighting yet again.

"I just wish there was something I could do, something that he would let me do," Gansey says, finally articulating the cause of his anger. "I wish he wasn't so  _proud_."

"No you don't," Ronan says, a little sharply. Gansey looks over at him in surprise.

"Yes, I do," he insists.

"No," Ronan says again. "Because then he wouldn't be Ad- Parrish."

Gansey doesn't seem to notice the slip. He lifts one hand from the wheel to brush it over his bottom lip. "But-"

"Come on, Gansey," Ronan says, suddenly exhausted. "He's fucking annoying about it, but it's what makes him  _him_. If he let you buy him all of the shit he wanted, you wouldn't like him as much. You know it's true."

Gansey replies, but so quietly that Ronan can't really hear him over the engine. It looks like he says something like  _I just want him to be happy._

"He's not going to be happy with anything unless he gets it for himself," Ronan says. "You know he'd be miserable in Monmouth with us since he didn't fucking buy the place."

Gansey closes his eyes, that familiar action from when everything is too much and he just wants to escape. But he snaps them back open when he remembers he's driving.

They've left the highway, reached a stop light that directs Henrietta traffic back the way they've come. They're still far enough from the town that it's dark and silent, no houses, no businesses, just them and the car and the yellow light that instructs Gansey to hit the brakes as the light shifts to red.

Gansey closes his eyes again. "If Adam would just  _talk_ to me-"

He's interrupted by the sound of an engine, of a car pulling up next to them. A sports car, a fast car. Ronan glances through Gansey's open window into the other car and- 

Could it be?

No.

It isn't Kavinsky, the car isn't even a fucking Mitsubishi, but it's white and fast and the driver is a kid with dark hair and a white tank top and it  _feels_ like fucking Kavinsky.

The kid revs his engine, looks through Gansey's window with a familiar smirk of challenge. Ronan's blood jumps like he's been electrocuted, adrenaline wrapping around his bones, raising static on his skin. He hasn't done this in so long, he wants to, he needs to-

"Gansey," he whispers.

He knows what's coming next, Gansey's exasperated sigh, or breathless laugh, his regular refusal. It's too dangerous, it's illegal, it's childish-

"Okay," Gansey says.

"What?" Ronan says.

This is the longest red light in the history of the world.

"I want to," Gansey says. "I'm going to. Help me."

Ronan can't tell if he's delighted or terrified. "Alright," he says easily, smoothly, _Ronanly._  "Don't fuck up the shift from third to fourth."

Gansey takes a deep breath, nods out the window at the other driver. The kid's smirk widens.

The opposing light turns yellow.

"Okay," Ronan says, muttering more advice. Gansey has only allowed Ronan to do this maybe two times at most in his presence. He's never done it himself. 

Oh, god, he's going to fucking lose.

"Make sure you-" 

"I know, Ronan," Gansey says, his voice steel.

The opposing light turns red.

Hands in the right places, feet poised to push and lift and-

The light above turns green.

Both cars sprint forward, engines flailing, darkness racing beside them.

Gansey doesn't fuck up the shift from third to fourth.

As the car rockets through the night, it seems like Ronan's life is flashing before his eyes. His father lifting Declan in the air, one of the only times Ronan can remember. His mother laughing in the kitchen of the Barns. Matthew in line for communion, his Adam's apple bobbing as his takes the wine. Gansey at Niall's funeral, stark in a black suit, his firm grip on Ronan's shoulders the only thing keeping Ronan from falling to the ground. The girl with the half shaved head who did his tattoo. Noah shrinking away from Ronan as he comes back late at night, feral and yelling and broken. Adam conjugating Latin verbs, his head bowed, holding his pen like it could snap at any moment. Blue maneuvering her way through a crowded night at Nino's, making time to stop and refill their tea and chat about Glendower. Calla calling him a snake.

But he doesn't only see memories, he sees things he's never seen before, things he  _can't_ have seen before. A smudge-less Noah and a younger Whelk, leaning against the red Mustang and staring up at the clouds. Blue and Noah sitting on Gansey's bed, inches apart, Noah's hands over his face. Gansey and Henry Cheng with their heads bent together. Calla and Maura sitting across from each other at a table, hands clasped, eyes closed. Persephone and Adam lugging a giant rock up a mountain. Adam and Blue standing close together, Adam looking angry and scared, Blue just looking-  _tragic_. Adam and Ronan sitting in the pews at St. Agnes. Helen Gansey sobbing in a dress that looks like the night sky. Gansey standing before a stone casket. Adam knelt at Gansey's feet, tears rolling down his cheeks. Gansey in his Aglionby sweater, face crumpled, his shoulders splattered with rain.

The images fade away and Ronan realizes that they're pulling into Monmouth's overgrown parking lot.

"Ronan?" Gansey asks. All traces of the boy who wanted to street race, the boy angry at Adam and Adam's pride, the boy who doesn't know where his friends are going even as they remain by his side, who's scared of the point where their paths inevitably diverge are gone. The boy who touches Blue's hands at every stolen moment. (Ronan isn't stupid enough not to notice.) All that's left is placid concern at Ronan's silence. 

"I'm fine," Ronan says, unbuckling his seatbelt before Gansey's even put the parking brake on. He jumps out of the car as soon as he can, slamming the door shut with a hollow  _thud_ that echoes across the lot, off the sides of the empty-eyed building. He doesn't know what that was, doesn't know what kind of psychicy-Greywaren-ley line-Cabeswater shit just happened, but he's angry and confused and doesn't like most of what he saw.

Gansey unfolds himself from the driver's seat, his eyes finding Ronan's. 

"Why did we go to Cabeswater?" Ronan asks again, trying to shove away all thoughts of him and Adam sitting alone in a darkened church, of Adam crying before Gansey like he's done something wrong, of Gansey looking lost in his fucking Algionby uniform, of Blue looking like the world has been pulled out from under her feet.

Gansey tries to shrug, tries to pull off nonchalance. It doesn't work. That's okay. Ronan's attempt at appearing casual isn't working either.

"Helps me sleep," he says.

Ronan doesn't push it. 

**Author's Note:**

> the title of this comes from four walls by broods.
> 
> i listened to not going home by olivver the kid a lot while i was writing this if you want to check it out.
> 
> check me out on tumblr @gansiiy and on twitter @helengansiiy !! 
> 
> i love comments and feedback thanks!!!!!!!


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